Kavinsky - 1986

Kavinsky - 1986
Ah, 1986. The year of Top Gun, Platoon, Aliens and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's also the year the 2002 computer game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is set in. Why does this matter? Well, like the films of 1986, '1986' is seriously high concept. And like GTA, it has an affectionate irony yet faithfulness to the original. And perhaps that's the problem. It's all very well and good creating music that sounds like a 1986 arcade game but unless you're playing an arcade game in 1986, what's the point?

The concept and style of '1986' carries on from the video to 'Testarossa Autodrive' on Kavinsky's last EP 'Teddy Boy', which cast Kavinsky as a manga zombie dressed in a Teenwolf-style American college sports jacket back from the dead after crashing his Ferrari. The latest installment to these ghostly shenanigans begins with 'Wayfarer', a brutal, straightforward, pounding synth line and, at the most, a four-note casio melody. It crashes along more like a juggernaut than a sports car and plants you firmly in the cockpit of Airwolf with the theme tune turned up to 11, which is no bad thing.

'Dead Cruiser' and 'Grand Canyon' are both majestic, muscular and spot-on impersonations of Atari game soundtracks. Both would work perfectly in a montage sequence from an 80s action movie. And both don't sound like anything else around. But, for me, they cross the line and become too much like curios. Don't get me wrong, they're cool, just a little too cool for their own good.

Also on this rather tasty red vinyl is the SebastiAn remix of 'Testarossa Overdrive'. SebastiAn, the best producer on Ed Banger, tweaks Kavinsky's best track so far so the manic electronic guitar riff is even fiercer, the hi-hats hiss more angrily and the beats are far, far heftier than the original. A significant improvement.